"Odium"
A man asleep, Rubio flees Paris for the Egyptian desert. He escapes his back-biting colleagues, the proximity of his ex-wife, and the depressions that he diagnoses daily in the medical surgery. And Paris hates Rubio too. The city is like a TV show that wants only to humiliate him, to grab the old fellow's neck and force him to shop. The city is after him, and Rubio is running for his life, running down a slope while memory rides behind, ever so gently applying the brakes. Existentialist and full of sharp observation of Western values, "Odium" is a novel for our time.
"...a sophisticated, stimulating and refreshingly unparochial piece of Scottish writing."
The Herald
"...this is breathtaking stuff."
Scotland on Sunday
"A gloriously misanthropic and bilious treatise on the decadent, immoral and inane nature of western European life."
Independent on Sunday
"The Machine Doctor"
The Machine Doctor is a humorous, satirical first novel. Set in the Granite City of Aberdeen the story explores the natural heritage of the computer age, how the silicon chip developed from the standing stones, and how greed and idiocy and dining out became the norm for the mobile phone waving populace of Scotland.
2002 Scottish Book of the Year shortlisted
". . . an exhilarating and anarchic comedy shot through with a withering social commentary"
Scotland on Sunday
". . . a superbly written book, a fast-paced novel of roller-coaster proportions. Burnett is a brilliant new talent"
The Journal
". . . an ambitious, multi-voiced satire on the soul-destroying mind-numbing effects of computers in the 21st century. . . fast-paced, insightful and frequently hilarious."
The List
". . . satire as sharp as a sponge"
Sunday Herald
". . . ingenious . . . it has energy and commitment, it is funny and makes a serious point lightly."
The Herald
